Anyone remember the John Houseman ad for Smith Barney? “They make money the old-fashioned way. They UHN it.” Well, you can put that idea in an urn, at least when it comes to Washington State car dealers. Now that times are tough, the dealers have successfully lobbied (a euphemism if there ever was one) their state legislators to increase car dealers’ “document fees” from $50 to $150. Get ready to get ill, courtesy The News Tribune.
Such an increase could let auto dealers statewide pocket as much as $100 million to $150 million, money that would go straight to their bottom line. Those figures assume dealers will sell 1 million cars and trucks and that all dealers would charge the maximum fee allowed, as most do.
Sen. Tracey Eide, D-Federal Way, said she sponsored Senate Bill 5816 at the request of the Washington State Auto Dealers Association and its 328 dealerships, and one of her former constituents, Mary Byrne, former owner of Nissan of Fife. Byrne now is a partner in Advantage Nissan in Bremerton.
It gets worse.
“They told me that Washington state sales are down by at least 30 percent and that they just want to be able to compete with Idaho and Oregon on our borders, which have lower sales taxes,” Eide said. “They came to me asking for help. Our local dealers are our livelihood in our communities, and they are going extinct. If they think this is going to be their lifeline, I’ll be there.”
Yes, you will. But don’t get to thinking that Elde doesn’t have Washington consumers’ best interests at heart, or that such a concept would be antithetical to this piece of pork pie legislation. Double negatives be damned, consumers still have the upper hand.
Eide said the fee is voluntary and that her bill would make it clear that it’s as much a negotiable item as the price of the vehicle itself. Sales and lease documents would have to disclose in boldface, italics, underlined type or in capital letters that the $150 fee is negotiable, she said.
So that’s alright, then.
Obviously the dealers will be upfront and honest about the fee and not raise it because they care about the customer.
So they want to be more competitive by charging more? (Honest question!) Or perhaps it is so they can say, “Look , we’ll take another hundred off for ya?”
If I were buying a car in WA, I’d wait ’till the deal was about closed. Then I’d show the dealer’s salesman a picture of Sen Eide, tell him to write “Tax Whore” across the top, sign it, and give me a dealership envelope or I’d walk.
It doesn’t matter.
I made a deal with the dealer and when I saw $140 document fee, I said that until that is gone I will not buy and he had to take it off.
See dealers are not required to charge it. The law allows them to do so.
Just another reason not to go to a dealership.
“Eide said the fee is voluntary and that her bill would make it clear that it’s as much a negotiable item as the price of the vehicle itself. Sales and lease documents would have to disclose in boldface, italics, underlined type or in capital letters that the $150 fee is negotiable”
Last F&I I dealt with at a dealer was quite enthusiastic about trying to have me sign sales documents and take them back without reading them. You’d think I was trying to read through the fine print before signing or something…
(Also same F&I wasted half an hour trying to explain to me that my double digits APR rate was OK for someone with my credit rating. Like I don’t know my FICO score)
I think it was Chuck Goolsbee a while back who said it’d be interesting to put a proposition to vote allowing the auto to sell directly to the public – bypassing dealerships altogether. I’d sign a petition for that.
How did she come up with 1M car/truck sales in WA? WA population is 2% of the USA population. Does she expect annual sales at the 50M level? Does she get a direct supply line from BC?
“They told me that Washington state sales are down by at least 30 percent and that they just want to be able to compete with Idaho and Oregon on our borders, which have lower sales taxes”
So why didn’t they lobby for lower sales taxes? Oh, right, that would save the customer money but put nothing extra in their pockets…no greed here, move along now.
Edit : boldface, italics, underlined type costs more to print…better bump that fee up some more to cover that while you’re at it
Eide should have any of her college and high school degrees immediately revoked.
I say this because all the contradictions in her quote have only made my headache worse.
ttacfan The fee most likely include used car sales, not just new cars. Kind of stupid a fee to sell me the car, like you are doing me some favor. A million does look a little high even with used considering the year we are about to have for car sales in general.
She probably does have a direct supply from BC, only someone totally stoned would think adding fees would make the dealers MORE competetive. “Come buy from us we charge you more money” That’s what you get for smoking an indica and not a sativa.
I can’t believe one of this bill’s D-Bag sponsors is my state representative. I let him have it.
TO: Representative Jim Jacks
FROM: Mr. Christopher Dumm
BILL: 1939 (Against)
SUBJECT: Are you, uh, kidding me?
MESSAGE:
Dear Representative Jacks:
You want to let car dealers *triple* their already-ridiculous fees for filling out papers when I buy a car? This money isn’t for the public good. It won’t go into road maintenance, or mass transit, or the general fund; it’s just pure profit for car dealers! Why not let them bargain for my money, or earn it through good customer service?
Oops, my bad. The mention of ‘car dealer’ in the same paragraph with ‘good customer service’ has been found to induce nausea, vertigo, cognitive dissonance, and even schizophrenic fugue in otherwise healthy individuals. In the interest of all our health, I’ll try not to do it again.
Why are you in favor of this private tax? It doesn’t take a law degree to sell a car, but you would let a car dealership secretary charge a lawyer’s rates just to fill out papers! Filling out routine papers is part of the cost of doing business, something we business owners sometimes call ‘overhead.’
Please don’t beg off with the excuse that these fees are “voluntary”, because you have to know that dealers will abuse it. They’ll bury the ‘voluntary’ language on the back side of Page 2 of their byzantine contract, in eight-point type, and they’ll present the $150 fee as a done deal *after* the customer thought they had already agreed on a price.
This bill was sponsored at the request of the Washington State Auto Dealers Association. Do they really represent your district and your constituency? Despite the influence and money that they have surely promised, I truly cannot believe that you would put the interests of a handful of dealers ahead of the interests of every Washingtonian who will need to buy a car. This is nothing but a private tax, for the purely private benefit of one of the sleaziest industries out there.
I’m a lawyer, and I know all the sleaze jokes about my profession, but even I can hold my head high when I have to visit a car dealership. If you’ve ever bought a car, you know what I’m talking about: confusing terms, bait-and-switch advertising, hidden fees, high-pressure bargaining tactics, outright lies. You’ve seen the ‘four-square’ haggling sheet, haven’t you? It’s pretty confusing, isn’t it? It’s meant to be.
If you don’t know about sleazy car dealers, you should ask your family, or your neighbors. Or your constituents. If you plan to defend this bill at a public meeting down here in Vancouver, I’d love to be there.
Oh, one more thing: If you pass this bill, I’ll just go to Portland for all my cars. I’ve only bought one car in Oregon in the 15 years I’ve lived in Washington, but your bill would leave me no choice.
Sincerely,
Christopher Dumm
FWIW, WA has no income tax but high sales tax. OR has no sales tax but high income tax. ID has a moderate level of both.
(I still have no idea how this is supposed to help anyone on either side of the argument at all…)
Why would a negotiable fee require state legislation?
I immediately stroke through any documentation fee, initial the change, and pass it to the salesman for his initials, which have always been forthcoming.
He can skin the next rube through the door. Otherwise, that’s why God gave me feet.
Use the Rush Lameballs approach, go test drive a car at every dealership in your local area and tell them you are only going to buy if that bill doesn’t pass. If it passes, you’ll buy a used car from a private seller.
If enough people do that, they might get the message.
Or maybe not, but you would’ve made your point, wasted their time and drove something you haven’t driven before. You might even get the pleasure of hanging up on them multiple times later.
A little off-topic, but you reminded me of something I hadn’t thought about in years.
Back when Mr. Houseman was doing those ads (early 80s, I think), my Smith Barney rep had a sign in his office that said “We make money the old-fashioned way. We STEAL it.” Ha ha! Brilliant parody. Very funny. We all had a good laugh.
That sign disappeared about the time that the public discovered that certain annual corporate reports were, well, fictional.
That pretty much illustrates our collective loss of trust and confidence in business and the corporate world. Sad.
Having low/no sales tax states on Washington’s borders doesn’t really help people duck the sales tax. You still have to register the car in Washington if you want to get a license plate, and when you do they’ll hit you up for the use tax if the car is new. I expect it’s possible to get around it, but it’s a pain and there’s the risk of serious penalties if you get caught.
In Washington State, the car purchase sales tax is 10%. I do not know if it is county-by-county or the whole state.
The reason the $50 was legislated in the first place was to put an end to dealer abuse of car buyers unaccustomed to telling a salesperson NO. As has been mentioned, this legislation is pure auto dealer pork.
Bills are introduced the first three months of a secession. Checking in every few days to see what is being introduced is required to keep stuff like this from getting passed.
Getting the Jackboot off one’s throat begins by pressing the TV Off button. The dozens that try to make a difference in the battle against legislated evil are outnumbered by hundreds of thousands who are nothing more than dead weight in the fight. Being glued to American Idol, Deal or No Deal, the dancing show, and similar pabulum is much preferred by the teeming masses.
Let’em eat cake.
In Washington State, Senators introduced 1108 bills. Representatives introduced 1301 bills. That’s 2409 bills with a specific purpose of altering your life.
You think maybe the TV should be turned Off and you get to reading what is going on?
If you live in Washington State, here’s the place:
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/dailystatus.aspx?year=2009
I’m sure glad I don’t live in Washington. I’m also glad that my automotive needs are satisfied and I don’t have to play the dealership games at any time in the foreseeable future.
Times change and successful businesses change with the times. Those who insist on continuing to do business as they have in the past will fail.
It’s amazing how fast this country is going to socialism. This is the USA,home of free enterprise. There should not have been a cap on this in the first place and they are just increasing the cap. This is not a mandatory fee and the customer has the option to pay it or not. The internet is feeding people information about dealer cost of autos and their profit margins are most likely getting very slim. This is a way get some revenue to pay for the clerical work that they have to do. For every 1 sale there is problem 10 that they have to process paperwork on for a possible sale that does not happen because they change their mind, go somewhere else, or can’t get finacing. All this paperwork takes time and as they say time is money.
Yes, this bill sucks ___ …what’s new? The governor and both houses of our state congress are Democratic locks; so as King & Pierce counties go, so does all the state.
That said, there is some misinformation here.
First, WA state sales tax is 8.0% + local tax; where I live (Spokompton), the total is 8.1%. Now you may think that’s insane, but WA does not have an annual income tax…so while I get screwed at the time of purchase, I don’t pay any income tax throughout the year. Plus, state sales tax paid is deductible on my federal taxes.
Second, if you think WA is becoming more socialist inre this issue, you’re wrong. Yes, Seattle is driving WA to be California Jr.; there is nothing anybody can do about that. However, in the “old” days, our car license tabs were based upon a percentage of the vehicle value. Thus, when your renewal came you’d find yourself cursing about the bill for $200, 250, 300, 350, etc. And that is for each vehicle…so if you owned 2 or 3 late-model cars, you could find yourself paying well over $1K a year to license them. That was crazy socialism…and luckily, it was fought via state-wide initiative and went buh-bye.
Third, dealers are desperate and if they know you’ll walk if this “fee” isn’t negotiated, they’ll negotiate. Plus, if you live near Portland or Idaho, you just threaten to go across the border.
I like Washington: In one day I can go from vistas of wheat fields to desert scablands to 12K foot mountain ranges to untouched rain forests to the violent Pacific ocean. Sure, the sales tax is a bummer, but having lived in Pennsylvania…w/it’s property taxes, school taxes, township taxes, borough taxes, state income tax AND sales tax…I’m quite fine w/my current situation.